Signed languages

In this paper we describe a cognitive grammar approach to the study of signed language grammar. Using data from different signed languages, we explore three broad topics. First, we examine pointing, Place, and placing. We analyze pointing as a construction consisting of a pointing device, a symbolic structure which directs the interlocutor’s conceptual attention, and a Place, a symbolic structure consisting of a spatial location and a meaning, the focus of attention. Placing is a construction in which non-body anchored signs are placed at a location in space, thereby creating or recruiting a Place structure which can be used in subsequent discourse. We examine how these structures work in nominal grounding and in extended discourse. Second, we examine a cognitive grammar approach to grammatical modality. Our analysis is based on the cognitive model called the control cycle, which posits two types of control: effective, which describes our striving to influence what happens in the wo...

Ancient Maya texts are informationally dominated by hieroglyphic inscriptions and visually dominated by figural art with distinctly formed hands. The hands suggest iconographically embedded hand signs, which would constitute a unique modality of semantic expression and a discourse complement to hieroglyphic writing. However, the hands have eluded decipherment. Here I take a novel approach. I use relevant phonological parameters (handshape, orientation, position) as features for defining a hand form as a graphic symbol. I also exploit inferences of scribal design and composition to constrain possible hand-sign values. Notably, I examine the hand-sign and hieroglyphic inscriptions of Altar Q, an 8th-century sculptural text that is ideal for its relative abundance of graphic hand signs, sizable hieroglyphic inscription, and wealth of contextualizing information. The resulting evidence (including isomorphisms between hand signs and hieroglyphs, intratextual references for hand-sign values, and direct links between hand-sign and hieroglyphic information) converges on a single solution: Each of Altar Q's hand signs is an esoterically formed numeral for one of four Long Count dates. I thus demonstrate and mathematically verify eleven unique numerical hand signs. Although partial, this initial decipherment of Ancient Maya graphic hand signs provides a strong base for future efforts.

Como toda língua, a Libras, língua brasileira de sinais, está sujeita a diversas formas de variação: diatópica, diacrônica, diafásica, diastrática e diaétnica. Entretanto, observamos uma outra forma relacionada ao contato de duas línguas, no caso a Libras e o Português: a variação diaglóssica (Monteagudo, 2011). Neste artigo, partindo da história da emergência da Libras desde a fundação do Instituto Nacional de Educação de Surdos (INES), analisamos o seu contato com o Português e como essa relação entre línguas produziu variedades diaglóssicas, com maiores ou menores influências de cada uma dessas línguas. Considerando o conceito de continuum linguístico e analisando diversos trabalhos relacionados ao contato entre essas duas línguas, levantamos e elencamos algumas características dos dois extremos de um continuum diaglóssico, um com maior influência do Português e menor da Libras e outro maior influência da Libras e menor do Português. Foi observado, então, que nesse primeiro extremo do continuum estaria uma variedade próxima ao Português Sinalizado com mais empréstimos da língua portuguesa, maior uso de datilologia e de mouthing, além da linearidade, o que resultaria em uma menor utilização de sinais incorporados. Já na outra extremidade, a com variedades mais próximas da Libras, entre elas a Libras emancipada, haveria maior uso da simultaneidade e da espacialidade, além de mais expressões faciais e corporais, classificadores e soletração rítmica. Buscamos com este trabalho, reforçar a existência de muitas variedades da Libras e mostrar que essas variedades diaglóssicas são resultados da diversidade própria da(s) comunidade(s) Surda(s). A heterogeneidade é uma característica intrínseca às línguas, e a Libras não é exceção. É fundamental combater o preconceito linguístico e a discriminação contra essas variedades, reconhecendo a riqueza e a diversidade da Libras. Afinal, todas essas variedades apresentam gramáticas complexas e completas e fazem parte da expressão da(s) cultura(s) e da(s) identidade(s) Surda(s) no Brasil.

در این مقاله که در کنفرانس زبانهای ایران دانشگاه مک‌گیل سال ۲۰۲۳ ارائه شد، به سرکوبهای فرهنگی و زبانی که زبان اشاره ایرانی و جامعه ناشنوای ایران متحمل می‌شود پرداخته شده است. سرکوبهایی که از جانب نظام پزشکی، نظام آموزشی و خانواده علیه این زبان اعمال شده و همچنان می‌شود.

American Sign Language (ASL) makes extensive use of pointing signs, but there has been only limited documentation of how pointing signs are used for demonstrative functions. We elicited demonstratives from four adult Deaf signers of ASL in a puzzle completion task. Our preliminary analysis of the demonstratives produced by these signers supports three important conclusions in need of further investigation. First, despite descriptions of four demonstrative signs in the literature, participants expressed demonstrative function 95% of the time through pointing signs. Second, proximal and distal demonstrative referents were not distinguished categorically on the basis of different demonstrative signs, nor on the basis of pointing handshape or trajectory. Third, non-manual features including eye gaze and facial markers were essential to assigning meaning to demonstratives. Our results identify new avenues for investigation of demonstratives in ASL.

Las distancias temporales se suelen indicar mediante expresiones que especifican una cantidad de alguna unidad de tiempo (p. ej., días, semanas o meses). En distintas variedades del español se reportan dos maneras diferentes de calcular este número: (1) contar solo las unidades enteras que transcurren entre dos eventos, o (2) tomar en cuenta ambas unidades dentro de las cuales acaecen los eventos. En la presente investigación se examina el uso de estas dos estrategias por medio de un cuestionario aplicado a estudiantes costarricenses. Se concluye que la primera es la más general, pero que, al especificarse distancias cercanas o mayores a una semana en términos de días, se emplean ambas estrategias, lo cual causa ambigüedades.

The teaching of sign language and Deaf Studies to hearing people at university in Viet Nam has developed along with efforts to provide higher educational opportunities to Deaf people in Viet Nam and can be best understood through an examination of the unique cultural history of Viet Nam.

Reading is a critical process for conscious learning and enhancing knowledge; however, little is known about reading in interpreters' professional lives. We used an online survey to collect information about the reading habits of signed language interpreters (n = 1,382) and spoken language interpreters (n = 601) to examine overall patterns, as well as variations, between the groups. The interpreters responded to questions regarding (a) engagement with reading types, (b) hours spent reading, (c) motivations for reading, (d) factors that reduce engagement in reading, (e) reading in which interpreters should engage, (f) relevance of reading to professional practice, and (g) priority of research topics for reading. Similarities were found between the groups, with divergence in three areas-reading preparation materials, reading research studies, and the types of research studies the participants wish to read. The results provide insights into professional interpreters' engagement with reading and its application to their professional practice.

A new phonological system is becoming conventional across a group of DeafBlind signers in the United States who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels-a practice known as 'Protactile'. The recent conventionalization of protactile phonology is analyzed in this article. Research on emergent visual signed languages has demonstrated that conventionalization is not a single monolithic process, but a complex of principles involving patterns of distribution-discreteness, stability, and productivity of form-as form becomes linked with meaning in increasingly stable ways. Conventionalization of protactile phonology involves assigning specific grammatical roles to the four hands (and arms) of signer 1 ('conveyer') and signer 2 ('receiver') in 'proprioceptive constructions' (PCs)-comparable to 'classifier constructions' in visual signed languages. Analyzing PCs offers new insights into how the conventionalization of a phonological system can play out in the tactile modality.*

This article examines interactions between deaf and hearing people in Nepal that are conducted in natural sign, a mode of signed communication involving relatively small repertoires of conventional signs complemented by iconic and indexical strategies. Natural sign is an exemplary case for unpacking the claim that ethics is not only intrinsic to linguistic interaction but also grounds its very possibility. While this is ultimately true for all language use, natural sign heightens this quality and its consequences, in terms of both interaction (whether people understand) and analysis (how scholars understand whether people understand). Bringing together Nepali Sign Language users' insights with academic theories of interaction, pragmatics, and semiotics, this article demon

Our paper is research in progress that is research investigating the use of games technology to enhance the learning of a physical skill. The Microsoft Kinect is a system designed for gaming with the capability to track the movement of users. Our research explored whether such a system could be used to provide feedback when teaching sign vocabulary. Whilst there are technologies available for teaching sign language, currently none provide feedback on the accuracy of the users' attempts at making signs. In this paper we report how the three-dimensional dsplay capability of the technology can enhance the users' experience. Also, when using tracking to identify errors in physical movements, how and when should feedback be given. A design science approach was undertaken to find a solution to this real world problem. The design and implementation of the solution provides interesting insights into how technology can not only emulate but also improve upon traditional learning of ph...

This chapter presents a Cognitive Grammar analysis of relative clause constructions in Iranian Sign Language (ZEI), claiming that these constructions can be characterized as manifestations of a reference-point relationship. A manual marker  (pointing), and two facial markers (raised brows and squinted eyes) were described and analyzed as important markers of ZEI relative clause constructions.

The members of a community have conventionalized linguistic structures to convey both the content of a message and the social status of the interlocutors. Crucial in the codification of interpersonal relations are address terms, which are determined by pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms (Leech, 1983:11) related to the language system, the local communicative event and the broader social context. The study examines the usage of address terms (direct address, reference, introductions) at a bilingual university that uses American Sign Language (ASL) as language of instruction and socialization, and English in teaching/learning materials, email correspondence, written announcements, inter alia. Based on interviews with Deaf undergraduate students and Deaf faculty members, the study investigates the production of address terms in this bilingual academic setting and discusses the factors that shape their usage, including ASL linguistic structure, English address norms, participants' educational background, age and status, sociocultural characteristics of the Deaf community, and assumptions from society-at-large. The results reveal that Deaf students and faculty have expectations about address practices inside and outside university campus and follow a complex set of norms in ASL and written English. The findings also provide insights into how members of the Deaf community experience linguacultural contact between signed and spoken/written languages.

Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination.

In this paper we describe a cognitive grammar approach to the study of signed language grammar. Using data from different signed languages, we explore three broad topics. First, we examine pointing, Place, and placing. We analyze pointing as a construction consisting of a pointing device, a symbolic structure which directs the interlocutor’s conceptual attention, and a Place, a symbolic structure consisting of a spatial location and a meaning, the focus of attention. Placing is a construction in which non-body anchored signs are placed at a location in space, thereby creating or recruiting a Place structure which can be used in subsequent discourse. We examine how these structures work in nominal grounding and in extended discourse. Second, we examine a cognitive grammar approach to grammatical modality. Our analysis is based on the cognitive model called the control cycle, which posits two types of control: effective, which describes our striving to influence what happens in the wo...

Our paper is research in progress that is research investigating the use of games technology to enhance the learning of a physical skill. The Microsoft Kinect is a system designed for gaming with the capability to track the movement of users. Our research explored whether such a system could be used to provide feedback when teaching sign vocabulary. Whilst there are technologies available for teaching sign language, currently none provide feedback on the accuracy of the users' attempts at making signs. In this paper we report how the three-dimensional dsplay capability of the technology can enhance the users' experience. Also, when using tracking to identify errors in physical movements, how and when should feedback be given. A design science approach was undertaken to find a solution to this real world problem. The design and implementation of the solution provides interesting insights into how technology can not only emulate but also improve upon traditional learning of ph...

User Centred Design (UCD) is today a widely accepted philosophy in systems development. UCD stresses the importance of involving and consulting users throughout the design and development of a system; it puts users and their tasks at the centre of the process. The phases of UCD are not universal and there any many interpretations of how UCD might be applied. Despite the wide acceptance of UCD and its recognised value in terms of designing systems which better meet users' needs, there is little reported research on the application of UCD in actual development contexts. We describe how we employed UCD to develop a system for teaching sign language. We report on how users were involved and contributed to the design of the system at each of the UCD phases. Finally we reflect on what was learned and propose a model for others wishing to take a UCD approach.

The teaching of sign language and Deaf Studies to hearing people at university in Viet Nam has developed along with efforts to provide higher educational opportunities to Deaf people in Viet Nam and can be best understood through an examination of the unique cultural history of Viet Nam.

La documentación lingüística es un esfuerzo de registro, descripción y análisis del lenguaje que gira en  torno  a  tres  ejes  generales:  la  preservación  de  la  lengua  para  ser  estudiada  en  la  forma  de  bases  documentales multimedia, alguna forma de revitalización o planeación lingüística para fortalecer el uso, y  la investigación sobre las condiciones que favorecen o inhiben su vitalidad, sobre todo en el caso de las  lenguas consideradas en peligro de extinción (Austin, 2021; Grenoble y Furbee, 2010; Gippert et al., 2006).  En estos tres objetivos generales (y todas sus variantes) se asume la definición de un objeto de estudio en  común:  el  lenguaje,  como  el  fenómeno  general  de  aquello  que  sucede  en  la  comunicación  entre  las  personas; y la lengua, como aquello que es parte de la identidad de una comunidad (la entidad efímera a la  que llamamos ‘español’, ‘mayo-yoreme’, ‘lengua de señas mexicana’). Observar la interacción comunicativa, sin los cortes apriorísticos de la estructura o la idea del  “mapa”, nos expone a una semiótica multimodal (Enfield, 2012; Mondada, 2016). Se trata de los diversos  recursos del lenguaje en distintos canales o modalidades de expresión. Las lenguas de señas presentan un reto importante en este terreno. Nos muestran interacciones  donde ambas modalidades (la de la lengua y la gestual) comparten el mismo canal viso-gestual (ambas se  hacen, entre otros recursos disponibles, moviendo las manos). En este trabajo, muestro el papel en el discurso en Lengua de Señas Mexicana (LSM) de los gestos caracterizados como de “Palma Abierta hacia Arriba” (PAA).

In this paper, we explore a strategy for teaching undergraduate American Sign Language/ English interpreting students about discourse types and genre boundaries. To do so, we describe a project-based learning approach employed with a cohort of second-year students, detail the assessment method, and analyze students' work. Specifically, the project required students to read a scholarly paper in the field of Interpreting Studies and create an American Sign Language video-recorded reformulation of the paper in a different discourse genre (e.g., a television news broadcast or a product infomercial). The findings indicate that, despite exhibiting a concerning lack of American Sign Language proficiency, students demonstrated remarkable creativity and critical thinking abilities. Students created video-recorded reformulations that incorporated salient points from their assigned articles while also applying principles of discourse analysis learned throughout the semester. Taken together, the findings suggest that applied discourse analysis projects and inter-genre reformulation activities can be used as a part of valuable pre-translation and translation training.

Interpreters face challenges when rendering names between languages. First, names may be unknown to the interpreter or contain culturally specific information. Further, names lack contextual clues that aid the decoding process. Finally, names may be pronounced in a manner that is difficult to understand (e.g., rapidly or with an accent). Spoken language interpreters have the option of repeating names in their original form; however, signed language interpreters work between languages produced in distinct language modalities (sign-speech) that share no phonological features; thus, names cannot simply be reproduced across languages. In this study we created a mock scenario between two interlocutors (a hearing computer specialist and a deaf international student) who enacted a training session in which they deliberately incorporated names. The interlocutors repeated this training session three times, each with a different team of interpreters. We report strategies used by the teams to convey names in their interpretations.

In this article, we provide an overview of the last twenty years of research on Indigenous sign languages, deaf community sign languages, co-speech gesture, and multimodal communication in the Australian context. From a global perspective, research on sign languages and on the gestures that normally accompany speech has been used as the basis for exploring different aspects of linguistic theory. Such research informs debates about the nature of the human language capacity and questions as to whether the diverse range of languages we see in the world share some universal patterns of organisation. We outline some of the theoretical and methodological achievements of scholars working in these interconnected disciplines in Australia, highlight the value of corpus-based approaches to linguistic research, draw attention to research on multimodality in the verbal arts, and discuss community-oriented research outputs guided by collaborative research practices. The article is accompanied by an on-line and editable bibliography of well over 300 publications that is accessible to researchers and others working in these related fields. 1 We acknowledge support provided by the Australian Research Council (DE160100873), the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL) (CE140100041), and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/N00924X/1). Many thanks to the Auslan research community for checking two decades of references. We thank Trevor Johnston and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and the editors of LD&C for their support. We also thank Eleanor Jorgensen and Rui Yamawaki for their editorial assistance.

When signers and speakers construct action, do they (also/always) role shift? This presentation focuses on both "role shifting" and "constructed action", mainly as they occur in signed languages, but also in (multimodal) spoken language discourse. I intend to show that, contrary to what is suggested in many recent publications, it is important to keep these two mechanisms apart and define them differently. Some of the first modern sign linguistic studies discuss the use of the signer's body to refer to somebody else. Friedman (1975:950), for example, writes that American signers may "take on" a third person reference, "in much the same way (conceptually) that the speaker takes on 3P reference in 3P narrative prose in oral language". "Role shifting" was shown to be marked non-manually, e.g. by a shift in body positioning and in eye-gaze behaviour (Padden 1986) and non-manual features of a similar kind were reported for a wide variety of signed languages. However, all signed languages contain examples of role shifting structures lacking overt marking. Also, role shifting may occur independent from direct speech. Such observations have inspired some authors to present a more fine-grained analysis, e.g. Engberg-Pedersen (1993)'s wellknown proposal to distinguish between 1) shifted reference, 2) shifted attribution of expressive elements, and 3) shifted locus for Danish Sign Language. In recent work, often from within a cognitive linguistic framework, what was previously called "role shift(ing)" is referred to as "constructed action". Cormier, Smith and Sevcikova (2013), for example, write: "constructed action (CA, or enactment, also known as role-shift), where the signer uses his or her body (the head, face, arms and torso) to represent the thoughts, feelings or actions of a referent using the surrounding space on a real world scale". The notion of CA was introduced by Winston (1991) and Metzger (1995) and inspired by the work of Tannen (1989) on "constructed dialogue" in spoken languages. Originally, CA was defined as "gestures to illustrate/re-construct the action of others." In this study, I argue that role shifting and constructed action are not the same phenomenon (cf. also Herrmann and Steinbach, 2012). This can for example be seen when constructed action is used as an alternative for a lexical verb sign or a classifier predicate and the signer "illustrates the action" but without reference to any "other". I explore the relationship between the two, studying their form(s) and function(s)/meaning(s). This is based on a review of the literature related to other signed languages, as well as on the analysis of role shifting structures and instances of constructed action as they appear in the Flemish Sign Language Corpus (www.corpusvgt.ugent.be). Further, I will (briefly) compare role shifting and constructed action in signed discourse to examples of role shifting and constructed action in the spoken (multimodal) language use of stand-up comedians. Such a comparison shows, once again, that when signed language use is compared to speech + gesture rather than to speech alone, similarities are striking (Vermeerbergen and Demey, 2007).

In American Sign Language (ASL), pronouns are directed to locations in space associated with specific referents to refer to them (e.g., BOB on the left, BILL on the right). Despite the relative lack of ambiguity in identifying referents, Meier (1990) argues that second and third person cannot be distinguished in the ASL grammar, and instead proposes a single category ''non-first'' (an analysis adopted for many signed languages). If true, signed languages stand in stark contrast to spoken languages, for which three-person systems prevail. Alternatively, signed languages could mark a three-way distinction using eye gaze patterns to grammatically distinguish between second/ third person referents (Berenz, 2002), just as eye gaze is known to mark verb agreement (Thompson et al., 2006). Using eye-tracking, we measured gaze occurring with pronouns, considering three different ways in which eye gaze could be used to mark pronouns. Results indicate that ASL does not use eye gaze to mark person, thus providing further support for a lack of a second/third person distinction. However, there is evidence for the use of eye gaze to mark locatives, which look like pronouns, but pick out a locative referent. We discuss possible reasons for the difference in person marking systems between signed and spoken languages, providing insight into what is universal across languages.

American Sign Language (ASL) makes extensive use of pointing signs, but there has been only limited documentation of how pointing signs are used for demonstrative functions. We elicited demonstratives from four adult Deaf signers of ASL in a puzzle completion task. Our preliminary analysis of the demonstratives produced by these signers supports three important conclusions in need of further investigation. First, despite descriptions of four demonstrative signs in the literature, participants expressed demonstrative function 95% of the time through pointing signs. Second, proximal and distal demonstrative referents were not distinguished categorically on the basis of different demonstrative signs, nor on the basis of pointing handshape or trajectory. Third, non-manual features including eye gaze and facial markers were essential to assigning meaning to demonstratives. Our results identify new avenues for investigation of demonstratives in ASL.

In American Sign Language (ASL), pronouns are directed to locations in space associated with specific referents to refer to them (e.g., BOB on the left, BILL on the right). Despite the relative lack of ambiguity in identifying referents, Meier (1990) argues that second and third person cannot be distinguished in the ASL grammar, and instead proposes a single category ''non-first'' (an analysis adopted for many signed languages). If true, signed languages stand in stark contrast to spoken languages, for which three-person systems prevail. Alternatively, signed languages could mark a three-way distinction using eye gaze patterns to grammatically distinguish between second/ third person referents (Berenz, 2002), just as eye gaze is known to mark verb agreement (Thompson et al., 2006). Using eye-tracking, we measured gaze occurring with pronouns, considering three different ways in which eye gaze could be used to mark pronouns. Results indicate that ASL does not use eye gaze to mark person, thus providing further support for a lack of a second/third person distinction. However, there is evidence for the use of eye gaze to mark locatives, which look like pronouns, but pick out a locative referent. We discuss possible reasons for the difference in person marking systems between signed and spoken languages, providing insight into what is universal across languages.

This paper focuses on the experiences of visually and hearing impaired children in Vietnam, a country where lay-based cultural beliefs predominantly shape understanding of any form of disability. The practice of ancestral worship informs a belief that disabilities are a punishment for wrong deeds in past lives, and as a result people with disabilities are often marginalized. Such reactions are sometimes taken to extremes: circumstantial evidence suggests that disabled children are even likely to be killed at birth. Others might simply be hidden away or rejected into the local orphanage. This paper discusses the therapeutic support on offer to children attending two types of educational settings, and explores how the wider school and local community considered and treated such children, examining the chosen forms of intervention in each institution from an ethnographic perspective. The first was a mainstream school with a specialist vocational training unit for visually impaired chil...

Interpreters face challenges when rendering names between languages. First, names may be unknown to the interpreter or contain culturally specific information. Further, names lack contextual clues that aid the decoding process. Finally, names may be pronounced in a manner that is difficult to understand (e.g., rapidly or with an accent). Spoken language interpreters have the option of repeating names in their original form; however, signed language interpreters work between languages produced in distinct language modalities (sign-speech) that share no phonological features; thus, names cannot simply be reproduced across languages. In this study we created a mock scenario between two interlocutors (a hearing computer specialist and a deaf international student) who enacted a training session in which they deliberately incorporated names. The interlocutors repeated this training session three times, each with a different team of interpreters. We report strategies used by the teams to convey names in their interpretations.

Speech therapy is a new and rapidly growing profession in Vietnam, yet factors shaping its development are not well understood. Previous research in Majority World contexts suggests the emergence of rehabilitation professions may be shaped by a set of shared factors; however, the utility of this information to the Vietnamese context is not known. Further, little is known of the experience of practising a profession embedded with Eurocentric notions of health and disability in different cultural contexts. This doctoral research sought to extend understanding of these issues by exploring how the speech therapy profession is emerging in Vietnam through the experiences of a group of Vietnam’s first speech therapy graduates. This research reports a longitudinal, qualitative study employing participatory research methods conducted across the different cultural settings of Australia and Vietnam. Phase 1 of the research was conducted between 2013 and 2014. In 2013, interviews with 13 of the...

Wylie, McAllister, Davidson, and Marshall (2013) argue that recommendations made within the World Report on Disability provide an opportunity for speech-language pathologists to consider new ways of developing services for people with communication and swallowing disorders. They propose that current approaches to the delivery of speech-language pathology services are largely embedded within the medical model of impairment, thereby limiting the ability of services to meet the needs of people in a holistic manner. In this paper, the criticality of selecting an appropriate service delivery model is discussed within the context of a recently established post-graduate speech therapy education programme in Viet Nam. Driving forces for the implementation of the program will be explored, as will the factors that determined the choice of service delivery. Opportunities and challenges to the long-term viability of the program and the program's potential to meet the needs of persons with c...

Setting the scene Viet Nam ' s population is over 87 million, ranking as the 13th most populous country in the world (United Nations, 2012). A majority of Vietnamese are of the Kinh ethnic group and there are 53 ethnic minority groups (General Statistics Offi ce of Vietnam, 2009). Since its adoption of market friendly reforms in 1986, the number of poor households in Viet Nam has decreased from 58% in 1993 to 19% in 2006 (World Bank, 2012). Life expectancy has increased from an average of 63 years in 1996 to 75 years in 2011 (World Bank, 2012). Further, implementation and delivery of population-wide health and education services such as compulsory primary school education, vaccination, and public health programs sees Viet Nam poised to meet most of its education and health-related Millennium Development Goals (World Bank, 2012). Together with this remarkable development, Viet Nam has made signifi cant progress towards recognizing the rights of persons with disabilities. Having signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse regions of the world. As in the rest of the world, deaf people live throughout sub-Saharan communities. This is a research on sub-Saharan signed languages and deaf community - organizing has created the opportunity to gather together the perspectives presented herein. Eighteen contributors illuminate the circumstances pertaining to cross-border, cross-regional, and global engagements in sub-Saharan deaf communities.

Verbos, gestos y Espacios Mentales Inmediatos La Lengua de Señas Mexicana (LSM) tiene distintas clases de verbos. Algunos de ellos siempre tienen la misma apariencia, otros cambian de forma con gran versatilidad y frecuencia. De manera similar a los verbos de la LSM, los del Español tienen muchas conjugaciones. Sin embargo, el análisis de los verbos de la LSM constituye un reto singular por la naturaleza del comportamiento que subyace a muchas de sus conjugaciones. Este trabajo se abocará a las conjugaciones verbales por medio de las cuales el hablante de la lengua de señas, o señante, expresa los argumentos del verbo.

Speech therapy is a new and rapidly growing profession in Vietnam, yet factors shaping its development are not well understood. Previous research in Majority World contexts suggests the emergence of rehabilitation professions may be shaped by a set of shared factors; however, the utility of this information to the Vietnamese context is not known. Further, little is known of the experience of practising a profession embedded with Eurocentric notions of health and disability in different cultural contexts. This doctoral research sought to extend understanding of these issues by exploring how the speech therapy profession is emerging in Vietnam through the experiences of a group of Vietnam’s first speech therapy graduates. This research reports a longitudinal, qualitative study employing participatory research methods conducted across the different cultural settings of Australia and Vietnam. Phase 1 of the research was conducted between 2013 and 2014. In 2013, interviews with 13 of the...

Setting the scene Viet Nam ' s population is over 87 million, ranking as the 13th most populous country in the world (United Nations, 2012). A majority of Vietnamese are of the Kinh ethnic group and there are 53 ethnic minority groups (General Statistics Offi ce of Vietnam, 2009). Since its adoption of market friendly reforms in 1986, the number of poor households in Viet Nam has decreased from 58% in 1993 to 19% in 2006 (World Bank, 2012). Life expectancy has increased from an average of 63 years in 1996 to 75 years in 2011 (World Bank, 2012). Further, implementation and delivery of population-wide health and education services such as compulsory primary school education, vaccination, and public health programs sees Viet Nam poised to meet most of its education and health-related Millennium Development Goals (World Bank, 2012). Together with this remarkable development, Viet Nam has made signifi cant progress towards recognizing the rights of persons with disabilities. Having signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Setting the scene Viet Nam ' s population is over 87 million, ranking as the 13th most populous country in the world (United Nations, 2012). A majority of Vietnamese are of the Kinh ethnic group and there are 53 ethnic minority groups (General Statistics Offi ce of Vietnam, 2009). Since its adoption of market friendly reforms in 1986, the number of poor households in Viet Nam has decreased from 58% in 1993 to 19% in 2006 (World Bank, 2012). Life expectancy has increased from an average of 63 years in 1996 to 75 years in 2011 (World Bank, 2012). Further, implementation and delivery of population-wide health and education services such as compulsory primary school education, vaccination, and public health programs sees Viet Nam poised to meet most of its education and health-related Millennium Development Goals (World Bank, 2012). Together with this remarkable development, Viet Nam has made signifi cant progress towards recognizing the rights of persons with disabilities. Having signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Setting the scene Viet Nam ' s population is over 87 million, ranking as the 13th most populous country in the world (United Nations, 2012). A majority of Vietnamese are of the Kinh ethnic group and there are 53 ethnic minority groups (General Statistics Offi ce of Vietnam, 2009). Since its adoption of market friendly reforms in 1986, the number of poor households in Viet Nam has decreased from 58% in 1993 to 19% in 2006 (World Bank, 2012). Life expectancy has increased from an average of 63 years in 1996 to 75 years in 2011 (World Bank, 2012). Further, implementation and delivery of population-wide health and education services such as compulsory primary school education, vaccination, and public health programs sees Viet Nam poised to meet most of its education and health-related Millennium Development Goals (World Bank, 2012). Together with this remarkable development, Viet Nam has made signifi cant progress towards recognizing the rights of persons with disabilities. Having signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

In this article we present some fundamental properties of the Croatian Sign Language (Hrvatski Znakovni Jezik, HZJ) pronominal system. The most common functions of pointing in HZJ are pronominal, demonstrative, locative, possessive and reflexive. Examination of the first person pronoun shows that the signer uses nonmanuals to indicate that she has taken the role of another person. Thus, the signer points to herself, but the intended reference is to a character in the story and not to the signer. These findings are used to provide evidence for grammatical first person. Viewed from Berenz's (2002) perspective, grammatical second and third person pronouns show some degree of consistency within each category and differences across categories. When reference to the second person is intended, the characteristics hand orientation, eyegaze and the head will usually line up. In contrast, when reference to third person is intended, disjunction of some of these features occurs. Thus, the distinction between second and third person pronoun is linguistically marked in HZJ. Therefore we argue against Liddell (1995, 2003), who treats pointing as deictic, gestural, hence nonlinguistic. Furthermore we argue with Berenz against Meier (1990), who claims that at least for ASL there is no distinction between second and third person reference. Our morphological analysis reveals no gender distinction in the pronoun system, but there are distinctions between singular, plural, inclusive and exclusive pronouns. No correlation between spoken Croatian case marking and either HZJ handshape choice or systematic mouthing was found.

strike most readers as uncontroversial. What is missing from AIAC is a prescription for how formal theories of information might be made more supple, more receptive to the cotextual and social-indexical cues through which we enact coordinate attention. The last two chapters feel like a missed opportunity. In a discussion of Chomsky's hierarchy of formal automata, the decidability space of deterministic Turing machines, and Bayesian inference, Kockelman seems to fall back on the kind of negative dialectics he has been chiding anthropologists for all along. What might have been more interesting is a discussion, say, of how-counterintuitivelynondeterminism has come to play a central role in modern computing, above all in the convex optimization strategies that underlie statistical (aka machine) learning. This is counterintuitive because, as Kockelman points out, a deterministic Turing machine is formally complete, that is, there is no decidable halting process that cannot be formalized in deterministic terms. And yet, even in the absence of a proof that P 6 ¼ NP, that is, that the space of problems that are decidable in polynomial time is a proper subset of those decidable in nonpolynomial time (long the El Dorado of computing theory), it has become clear that a lot of the things we depend on computers for can only be done efficiently with the addition of randomness. Nondeterminism is just one example of a theme where I wanted to see Kockelman stretch, technically and interpretively, to imagine a theory of computing he and others interested in the pragmatic dimensions of communication might embrace. What I have called premature ontological commitment (Computable Bodies, Bloomsbury, 2015, p. 55) remains, of course, a problem for computing. But perhaps it's become a problem for anthropology too.

Setting the scene Viet Nam ' s population is over 87 million, ranking as the 13th most populous country in the world (United Nations, 2012). A majority of Vietnamese are of the Kinh ethnic group and there are 53 ethnic minority groups (General Statistics Offi ce of Vietnam, 2009). Since its adoption of market friendly reforms in 1986, the number of poor households in Viet Nam has decreased from 58% in 1993 to 19% in 2006 (World Bank, 2012). Life expectancy has increased from an average of 63 years in 1996 to 75 years in 2011 (World Bank, 2012). Further, implementation and delivery of population-wide health and education services such as compulsory primary school education, vaccination, and public health programs sees Viet Nam poised to meet most of its education and health-related Millennium Development Goals (World Bank, 2012). Together with this remarkable development, Viet Nam has made signifi cant progress towards recognizing the rights of persons with disabilities. Having signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Verbos, gestos y Espacios Mentales Inmediatos La Lengua de Señas Mexicana (LSM) tiene distintas clases de verbos. Algunos de ellos siempre tienen la misma apariencia, otros cambian de forma con gran versatilidad y frecuencia. De manera similar a los verbos de la LSM, los del Español tienen muchas conjugaciones. Sin embargo, el análisis de los verbos de la LSM constituye un reto singular por la naturaleza del comportamiento que subyace a muchas de sus conjugaciones. Este trabajo se abocará a las conjugaciones verbales por medio de las cuales el hablante de la lengua de señas, o señante, expresa los argumentos del verbo.